Novel Bat-Monitoring Dataset Reveals Targeted Foraging With Agricultural and Pest Control Implications.

ABSTRACT: Quantifying ecosystem services provided by mobile species like insectivorous bats remains a challenge, particularly in understanding where and how these services vary over space and time. Bats are known to offer valuable ecosystem services, such as mitigating insect pest damage to crops, reducing pesticide use, and reducing nuisance pest populations. However, determining where bats forage is difficult to monitor. In this study, we use a weather-radar-based bat-monitoring algorithm to estimate bat foraging distributions during the peak season of 2019 in California's Northern Central Valley. This region is characterized by valuable agricultural crops and significant populations of both crop and nuisance pests, including midges, moths, mosquitos, and flies. Our results show that bat activity

SUBMITTER: Lee B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11733310 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature